Just two short years after its introduction onto the iOS platform, Mozilla’s Firefox Home is cutting off all ties to any mobile application and will no longer be available for download. This news comes on the heels of another announcement from the development company that suggests a specialized iPad specific browser app is already in the works. This suggests that perhaps the company is forgoing any future efforts with their seemingly failed mobile browser in order to focus all of their attention onto their newest projects.
That doesn’t mean that Mozilla will be done with browser creation for the iPhone though. In fact, employee Alex Limi has already called Apple’s established mobile browser, Safari, a “miserable experience.” And it’s no surprise that Mozilla is so invested in browser creation considering their latest heated rivalry between their Firefox engine and Google’s popular Chrome application.
Mozilla released the following message regarding the closure of the Firefox Home application;
“From the early days, Mozilla has been focused on empowering users across platforms and devices. We released Firefox Home as an experiment in bringing a part of the Firefox experience to iOS, focusing on Firefox Sync. This project provided valuable insight and experience with the platform, but we have decided to remove Firefox Home from the Apple App Store and focus our resources on other projects.”
“For those interested in continuing to use or improve the iOS Sync client that Firefox Home is built on, we have made the source available on GitHub, free of Mozilla trademarks and ready for independent development. As with all Mozilla projects, we ask developers to be aware of the Mozilla trademark policy.”
“We remain committed to providing compelling user experiences across as many platforms and devices as possible and will continue to explore the best ways to provide great experiences to iOS users.”
The silver lining here is that the company (as said in the release) is releasing any and all applicable development codes for their deceased project to the general public. So if you think you can take the Firefox Home shell and make something better with it, then feel free to grab the entire source code via GitHub.
Photo Credit: Mozilla
